Emmett Hopkins, owner of Foggy River Farm, holds Bodega Red potatoes that he grew at the farm in Healdsburg, California on Thursday, July 11, 2013. (BETH SCHLANKER/ The Press Democrat)

August 17, 2013, 5:37PM

08/17/2013

The foodies are currently all about the resurrection of a local potato known as the "Bodega Red."

We see by the food pages that the Sonoma County North chapter of Slow Food, the international organization established in Italy 24 years ago to combat the effects of fast food on our civilization, has taken up the case of the potato that made Sonoma County rich. For a few early years, at least.

With the good offices of the Sonoma County Land Trust and the work of Department of Agriculture geneticists, survivors of this pioneer crop have been duly identified and named. And they are growing, carefully tended by admiring New Age farmers.

This is interesting stuff for local historians as well as those who pursue food truths in laboratories with microscopes.

Scientists have determined these few survivors are indeed Bodega Red potatoes, thought by many to be lost to the ages.

Scientists can do that. Historians have a harder time. Often, they can only surmise from tales told. Although in the case of this particular potato, there seems to be remarkable amount of agreement.

The Bodega Red, geneticists say, is the product of a Peruvian ancestor. This is hardly a surprise. Most potatoes as we know them, came from ancestors in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. (Ask the knowledgeable owners of Sazon restaurant on Sebastopol Road. Peruvians know their potatoes.)

If there is a mystery involved, it is how that Peruvian potato came here to be modified by the soil and climate of the Sonoma coast.

This is most interesting. But the Bodega Red, lost or found, is only a chapter in the potato annals of Sonoma County. The bigger story, oft told, is about the part potatoes played in the early history of this area.

Potatoes, all kinds of potatoes, were the first commercial crop planted in Sonoma County.

The "Potato Boom" of the 1850s, an indirect result (one of many) of California's epic Gold Rush, was engendered by the sudden and immediate demand for food to feed the thousands of people who flocked to the new town of San Francisco on their way to or from the mines of the Sierra Mother Lode.

To entrepreneurs like the sea captain Steven Smith and other early arrivals, potatoes were the obvious answer. They grow quickly, are sturdy shippers and store well — if kept dry.

Smith, grantee of the Bodega Rancho in the early 1840s, had an entrepreneurial bent. He brought the first steam sawmill to the area, to supply San Francisco with lumber. And he allowed the "squatters" on his coastal land and encouraged them to plant potatoes.

The first potato planters, most historians agree, were John Keyes and Alexander Noble who grew a crop on Bodega Head in 1850 on land the Russians had once plowed for their vegetables.

In order to get the potatoes to market, Keyes bought a little 15-ton schooner named the Spray, stopping at Tomales Bay and carrying passengers as well as potatoes down to San Francisco.

The venture was so successful that others joined in immediately. Capt. Smith's own ship, the Faraway, carried tons of potatoes. Fields of potatoes spread inland to Bodega, north to Green Valley (Graton) and south to Valley Ford. In Big Valley, the area around Bloomfield, it was such a happy crop that Bloomfield became a kind of boomtown of its own, on a smaller scale, and, if local lore is correct, once vied with Santa Rosa to become the county seat, all predicated on the potato.

Keeping the crops dry was important. James McReynolds from Green Valley built the first potato warehouse on Bodega Head. And, as Bloomfield farmers figured out that it was easier to ship down the tidal creek from Petaluma, the first structure in that community was a wharf and a potato warehouse. Long before the reign of the chicken, before there were "Egg Boats" plying Petaluma Creek, there were "Potato Boats."

The potato's exclusivity didn't last, of course. Potatoes are hard on the land. And the next wave of settlers, excited by the valley soil that didn't require irrigation, planted wheat. Flour mills replaced the potato warehouses along Petaluma Creek. Potato prices fluctuated wildly and many growers turned to milk cows, as dairying being more dependable on the coastal land. The Spray and other coastal schooners began to haul dairy products along with potatoes and soon the little boat were known as "Butter Schooners" — another chapter in the diverse history of our agriculture.

The potato didn't disappear. Barges full of "spuds" (Spud Point in Bodega Bay was named for one that tipped and left a pile of rotting potatoes onshore.) carried this "money crop" to market well into the 20th century. German war prisoners from Camp Windsor dug potatoes during World War II.

In all shapes, sizes and colors they have become a staple at farmers' markets here and in the Bay Area.

So how does the Bodega Red come into this epic?

Sonoma County's first historian (and county clerk and sometime-editor of the Santa Rosa newspaper) Robert A. Thompson, in his 1877 "Descriptive Sketch" of the county, writes that the potatoes raised around the "port of Bodega" in 1850 and 1851 "became famous in the early history of San Francisco and have maintained their standing in the market to this day."

Thompson credits the farmer he calls "Uncle Jimmy Watson" who, he writes, "raised a big crop ... and realized enormous prices — in short, he struck that year a potato 'bonanza.'"

Indeed, West County lore says that James Watson, born in Ireland to Scottish parents, may have raised the first serious crop of Bodega Reds and, indeed, it is said that he gave them their name. Certainly, he prospered. His ranch (behind the landmark school that bears his name) became a show place of county agriculture in the years that followed.

So where did our Uncle Jimmy get that seed potato? Did he buy a few from a sailor in San Francisco who had picked them up on the way 'round the Horn to California? Or did Stephen Smith himself bring it directly here. West Sonoma County historian Howard McCaughey of Bodega and his dutiful daughter Ruth Burke, who published his careful historical notes on the settlement and development of that area, cautiously ascribe credit to Smith. After all, his bride, Manuela Torres, just happened to be from Peru — where the potato comes from. Today we would call it an Aha! Moment.

Did Manuela smuggle in a couple of little red seed potatoes in her bodice? Or did her brother, who followed her to the area and owned the Muniz Rancho north of Bodega, bring a sackful? We don't know.

But we find it reassuring, like a promise that civilization will survive, when you can start a meaningful and lasting agricultural community with something as basic and, yes, simple, as a potato.

The foodies are currently all about the resurrection of a local potato known as the "Bodega Red."

We see by the food pages that the Sonoma County North chapter of Slow Food, the international organization established in Italy 24 years ago to combat the effects of fast food on our civilization, has taken up the case of the potato that made Sonoma County rich. For a few early years, at least.

With the good offices of the Sonoma County Land Trust and the work of Department of Agriculture geneticists, survivors of this pioneer crop have been duly identified and named. And they are growing, carefully tended by admiring New Age farmers.

This is interesting stuff for local historians as well as those who pursue food truths in laboratories with microscopes.

Scientists have determined these few survivors are indeed Bodega Red potatoes, thought by many to be lost to the ages.

Scientists can do that. Historians have a harder time. Often, they can only surmise from tales told. Although in the case of this particular potato, there seems to be remarkable amount of agreement.

The Bodega Red, geneticists say, is the product of a Peruvian ancestor. This is hardly a surprise. Most potatoes as we know them, came from ancestors in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. (Ask the knowledgeable owners of Sazon restaurant on Sebastopol Road. Peruvians know their potatoes.)

If there is a mystery involved, it is how that Peruvian potato came here to be modified by the soil and climate of the Sonoma coast.

This is most interesting. But the Bodega Red, lost or found, is only a chapter in the potato annals of Sonoma County. The bigger story, oft told, is about the part potatoes played in the early history of this area.

Potatoes, all kinds of potatoes, were the first commercial crop planted in Sonoma County.

The "Potato Boom" of the 1850s, an indirect result (one of many) of California's epic Gold Rush, was engendered by the sudden and immediate demand for food to feed the thousands of people who flocked to the new town of San Francisco on their way to or from the mines of the Sierra Mother Lode.

To entrepreneurs like the sea captain Steven Smith and other early arrivals, potatoes were the obvious answer. They grow quickly, are sturdy shippers and store well — if kept dry.

Smith, grantee of the Bodega Rancho in the early 1840s, had an entrepreneurial bent. He brought the first steam sawmill to the area, to supply San Francisco with lumber. And he allowed the "squatters" on his coastal land and encouraged them to plant potatoes.

The first potato planters, most historians agree, were John Keyes and Alexander Noble who grew a crop on Bodega Head in 1850 on land the Russians had once plowed for their vegetables.

In order to get the potatoes to market, Keyes bought a little 15-ton schooner named the Spray, stopping at Tomales Bay and carrying passengers as well as potatoes down to San Francisco.

The venture was so successful that others joined in immediately. Capt. Smith's own ship, the Faraway, carried tons of potatoes. Fields of potatoes spread inland to Bodega, north to Green Valley (Graton) and south to Valley Ford. In Big Valley, the area around Bloomfield, it was such a happy crop that Bloomfield became a kind of boomtown of its own, on a smaller scale, and, if local lore is correct, once vied with Santa Rosa to become the county seat, all predicated on the potato.

Keeping the crops dry was important. James McReynolds from Green Valley built the first potato warehouse on Bodega Head. And, as Bloomfield farmers figured out that it was easier to ship down the tidal creek from Petaluma, the first structure in that community was a wharf and a potato warehouse. Long before the reign of the chicken, before there were "Egg Boats" plying Petaluma Creek, there were "Potato Boats."

The potato's exclusivity didn't last, of course. Potatoes are hard on the land. And the next wave of settlers, excited by the valley soil that didn't require irrigation, planted wheat. Flour mills replaced the potato warehouses along Petaluma Creek. Potato prices fluctuated wildly and many growers turned to milk cows, as dairying being more dependable on the coastal land. The Spray and other coastal schooners began to haul dairy products along with potatoes and soon the little boat were known as "Butter Schooners" — another chapter in the diverse history of our agriculture.

The potato didn't disappear. Barges full of "spuds" (Spud Point in Bodega Bay was named for one that tipped and left a pile of rotting potatoes onshore.) carried this "money crop" to market well into the 20th century. German war prisoners from Camp Windsor dug potatoes during World War II.

In all shapes, sizes and colors they have become a staple at farmers' markets here and in the Bay Area.

So how does the Bodega Red come into this epic?

Sonoma County's first historian (and county clerk and sometime-editor of the Santa Rosa newspaper) Robert A. Thompson, in his 1877 "Descriptive Sketch" of the county, writes that the potatoes raised around the "port of Bodega" in 1850 and 1851 "became famous in the early history of San Francisco and have maintained their standing in the market to this day."

Thompson credits the farmer he calls "Uncle Jimmy Watson" who, he writes, "raised a big crop ... and realized enormous prices — in short, he struck that year a potato 'bonanza.'"

Indeed, West County lore says that James Watson, born in Ireland to Scottish parents, may have raised the first serious crop of Bodega Reds and, indeed, it is said that he gave them their name. Certainly, he prospered. His ranch (behind the landmark school that bears his name) became a show place of county agriculture in the years that followed.

So where did our Uncle Jimmy get that seed potato? Did he buy a few from a sailor in San Francisco who had picked them up on the way 'round the Horn to California? Or did Stephen Smith himself bring it directly here. West Sonoma County historian Howard McCaughey of Bodega and his dutiful daughter Ruth Burke, who published his careful historical notes on the settlement and development of that area, cautiously ascribe credit to Smith. After all, his bride, Manuela Torres, just happened to be from Peru — where the potato comes from. Today we would call it an Aha! Moment.

Did Manuela smuggle in a couple of little red seed potatoes in her bodice? Or did her brother, who followed her to the area and owned the Muniz Rancho north of Bodega, bring a sackful? We don't know.

But we find it reassuring, like a promise that civilization will survive, when you can start a meaningful and lasting agricultural community with something as basic and, yes, simple, as a potato.